This invention relates to a method of fabricating an electronic component, particularly a discrete component, and to a component fabricated by the method.
Printing of functional inks has a long tradition in the electronics field. For example, pigment based inks are used to screen print interconnections and resistors on printed circuit boards. In these applications, the thick film inks used consist of a vehicle and pigments of silver and carbon, respectively, where the pigments can have a dimension in the nanometer range.
Traditionally most functional materials have been printed by conventional printing techniques, such as screen printing. More recent developments aim at printing not only the passive components of a circuit, but also active components. One example is the printing of nanoparticulate silicon, as disclosed in International patent application WO 2004/068536, providing semiconducting layers in devices like solar cells and transistors.
In known applications of printed electronics, the aim is to integrate the individual components, either in a complete circuit or as an array of individual components to form a larger device, such as an array of transistors used to drive a display or an array of photovoltaic cells forming a complete module. In these applications, the benefits afforded by the use of printing, and related techniques, towards simplicity of processing, large scale production, and manufacturing cost reduction are common knowledge.
It is an object of the invention is to extend these benefits to the fabrication of discrete electronic components.